The legal industry is one of the most competitive markets to break into, and lawyers tend to be incredibly savvy when it comes to marketing and online presence. This is just as true for family lawyers as it is for other types of legal professionals, such as personal injury or criminal defense.
We’ve spent many hours testing different SEO strategies to deliver tangible gains for our clients. Not all strategies produce impressive results, and not all strategies work for all business types. For our clients’ attorneys, we’ve had to get creative and think outside the box to help them gain an edge over their competitors in the local SEO space. Below, we’ll explain 5 of our top SEO strategies for divorce and family lawyers that will help them succeed in their market.
Our top 5 SEO strategies for divorce and family law:
- Setting the primary category of your Google Business profile
- The Power of Service Area Pages in SEO for Family Lawyers
- Consider consolidating your divorce page with your homepage for your SEO efforts as a divorce attorney
- Don’t underestimate the use of long-tail divorce keywords
- Create a calculator page to boost your family law SEO efforts
1. Set the primary category of your Google Business profile
The importance of choosing the right main category for your Google Business Profile cannot be stressed enough. Logic would suggest that a family lawyer should use the “family law attorney” category as the main category for their Google Business Profile. However, we saw fantastic results by changing the main category from “family law attorney” to “divorce attorney.” This change resulted in an almost automatic improvement in rankings for divorce terms without negatively impacting rankings for family law terms. When it comes to family law, divorce keywords drive the majority of traffic to these listings because this is the service people are most often searching for. So these are the main keywords the listing should be optimized for.
2. The Power of Service Area Pages in SEO for Family Lawyers
The family law market is not as saturated as other industries like dentistry when it comes to service and location pages. By creating service area pages, we have found a great way to increase the visibility of our family law SEO clients in areas where they do not have a physical office.
Some important steps to consider in this strategy:
- When choosing the city/municipality for which you want to create a service area page, make sure it is in a state where you are licensed to practice law and that your office is close enough that there is a chance that someone from that area will hire you.
- If possible, include reviews from people you have helped who live in that area. Also include directions from the community to your law firm.
- It is helpful to include content that addresses city-specific laws related to family law/divorce.
This strategy can be especially powerful if you’re creating service area pages for smaller communities near the city center where you operate, where there may not be a family law practice within the city limits. Since divorce keywords drive the majority of traffic to a family law attorney’s website and their Google business profile, this strategy is one of the few ways to continue to expand reach once a local market has been dominated.
3. Consider consolidating your divorce page with your homepage for your SEO efforts as a divorce lawyer
As we mentioned above, divorce terms are by far the most popular search terms when it comes to the family law profession. We had a client whose divorce page was competing with their homepage for these coveted divorce terms. This caused cannibalization and ultimately hurt their SEO efforts as a divorce attorney. By consolidating the divorce page content and moving it to the homepage, we were ultimately able to see an improvement in organic rankings for their most important target term with no negative impact. We’ve always found that it’s better to work with Google than waste time fighting them, and sometimes it’s easier to make small changes to your site that help Google understand the relevance and importance of each page.
It is important to note that this is not a one-size-fits-all strategy and should be tested before implementation.
4. Don’t underestimate the use of long-tail keywords related to divorce
Since the majority of traffic comes from divorce keywords, it is important to see how you can leverage long-tail keywords that target different types of divorce terms. For example: military divorce, men’s divorce, women’s divorce, LGBTQ+ divorce, uncontested divorce, etc.
5. Create a calculator page to boost your family law SEO efforts
Through our search analysis for family law attorneys, we’ve found that keyword terms with calculators have a lot of traffic. People want to get an idea of what they’re likely to have to pay for things like spousal support or child support. We’ve created a number of calculator pages for our family law SEO client, and these pages are always the top source of organic traffic, and they convert too.
Contact Sterling Sky Inc.
If you are a local business and need help with your Google Business Profile listing, your review strategy, or your online presence on Google and other search engines, we at Sterling Sky can help. We offer SEO audits, consulting, or monthly local SEO services. Contact our office today for more information.
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